Ben Brush

Ben Brush
Saddling up for the Kentucky Derby
Sire	Bramble
Grandsire	Bonnie Scotland
Dam	Roseville
Damsire	Reform
Sex	Stallion
Foaled	1893
Country	United States
Colour	Bay
Breeder	Runnymede Farm
Owner	H. Eugene Leigh & Edward D. Brown Michael F. Dwyer James R. Keene (at stud)
Trainer	Edward D. Brown Hardy Campbell, Jr.
Record	40: 24-5-5
Earnings	$65,108
Major wins
Champagne Stakes (1895) Kentucky Derby (1896) Suburban Handicap (1897) Latonia Derby (1897) Brighton Handicap (1897)
Awards
American Champion Two-Year-Old Colt (1895) American Champion Older Male Horse (1897) Leading sire in North America (1909)
Honours
United States Racing Hall of Fame (1955)

Ben Brush (1893–1918) was a high-class Thoroughbred racehorse and sire who won the 1896 Kentucky Derby. He was a bay stallion by Bramble (1879 champion handicap horse) out of Roseville (a sister to Azra, the 1892 Kentucky Derby and Travers Stakes winner) by Reform. Ben Brush was bred at Runnymead Farm.

Walter Vosburgh said Bramble was "a breed as tough as pine nuts." On May 6, 1896, Bramble and Roseville's son Ben Brush was the first horse to win the Kentucky Derby at its modern distance of 1¼ miles. (Since its inception in 1875, the Derby had been staged over 1½ miles, the length of the original Derby at Epsom Downs in England.) It was the 22nd running of the Derby and the first to drape a blanket of white and pink roses over the shoulders of the victor.

Ben Brush's dam, Roseville, was purchased by Colonel Catesby Woodford and Colonel Ezekial Clay of Runnymede Farm near Paris, Kentucky in 1891 from the horseman H. Eugene Leigh. At the time, she was in foal to Leigh's La Belle Stud stallion, Bramble. When the resulting colt was offered for sale by Clay and Woodford, Leigh and his new partner, the African-American Hall of Famer Ed Brown, bought him for $1,200. Brown named him Ben Brush in honor of the superintendent of the old Gravesend Race Track at Sheepshead Bay in Gravesend on Coney Island, New York who'd allowed them scarce, therefore valuable, stall space. The original Ben Brush was a strict disciplinarian, but ever after, Leigh and Brown found him very lenient when it came to his namesake. When others complained of his double standard, the human Brush said, "Not a damn one of you fellows ever named a horse Ben Brush!"